Actually not. Some of them are partially government-owned. That's a difference. It is now that all the debt is transferred to state-owned banks.

Which is basically what happened.

If licenses weren't numbered, the proliferation of taxis would render city streets unnavigable.

...Taxis carrying who? The same people who are now using their own cars? Why would that make things any worse? If anything, they should get better when more drivers are professionals.

That said, if the license system is abolished, then the government should reimburse the current license holders. After all, having had to pay for a license when newcomers don't puts them at an unfair competitive disadvantage due to opportunity costs.

New York is also probably the only place in the USA with both sufficient population and population density to justify alternative transportation schemes. How about some overhead transport? Lots of room up there.

Sterile mosquitoes are well-known to only retard the problem as long as you're doing it. It will require more severe measures to eradicate the mosquito.

Spoken just like someone who doesn't actually have to deal with that situation...

Okay, time for the facts of life: I, who work for a living, pay taxes too. For all intents and purposes that's an investment of time and effort, rather than money. So what happens if I'm not satisfied with my level of return and choose to cease investing - that is, quit? Why, I don't get paid, of course.

Perhaps you've never had to deal with that situation. Good for you. But don't except those who do to have much sympathy for your plight.

It isn't, though. The pirates can afford a better net connection, since they're not buying games.

There appear to be absolutely no creatures which subsist primarily on mosquitoes, but nobody knows for sure. The problem is that you have to analyze stomach contents to find mosquitoes, you can't just analyze some mosquitoes to find out who eats them.

As far as anybody can tell, though, we could lose mosquitoes entirely with no big secondary effects. So let's get on eradicating those fuckers. Way more important than anything the Gates foundation has claimed to do.

Astonishing. One of the best-loved, most cute and cuddly designs around, versus one of the most-hipsterized, ugliest fucking cars ever made. The DeLorean is fractally ugly. The closer you get to it, and the more details you check out, the uglier it gets.

I refuse to feel bad about that, because I have zero chance to change it while the majority still believes the lies. I do what I can to wake my neighbors up to the facts, because without them, there can be no popular uprising.

Online copies are just RAID done at the file level instead of the block level. The reason that RAID is not considered a substitute for a backup is that user error or a compromise can damage all online storage. If your backups are online, they are not backups, they're just redundancy.

in a city i used to live i photographed dozens of cars making illegal left turns at an intersection where lefties were not allowed (according to a sign with a slash over a lefty pointer). they were taken at an angle clearly showing readable license plates and that they were doing a lefty. i offered the photos to the police but they said they needed the evidence of who was doing the driving because the law applied to the driver, not the car. i guess i need to introduce them to the D.C. police to get them to be more creative about applying laws and go arrest some car owners.

gotta do something to keep idle trade negotiators off the streets.

Don't attribute to malice that which can be blamed on stupidity.

The problem is, stupidity is sufficient. The police don't need to be actively malicious if their institutional culture - "the brainwashing they've been given" - constantly prompts them to perform unfair and destructive actions.

Also, you're wrong. "Naturally enough, when they realized they fucked up they looked around for a way to cover their ass and saw the guy had a revoked license." Yes, it's perfectly natural to sacrifice a bystander to save your own skin. It's also not something you can blame on stupidity. It's deliberate, selfish cowardice.

As you say, the Guardian wants us to believe that the chemical industry is some cigar-smoking shades-wearing embodiment of corporate evil here, which is unlikely.

Of course not. It's a "nothing personal, just good business" embodiment of corporate evil. Someone wants a bonus and is somehow able to convince himself the resuls of the means used to get it aren't really his fault. Just like every other group of monsters in human history managed to convince themselves that their ends justified their means. The only difference is that corporate ends tend to be pettier.

It seems to be more like a dispute over the costs and benefits of enacting a ban before harm is conclusively established.

It's a matter of a few people getting all the benefits and everyone sharing costs - a known failure mode of capitalism. Or "success mode" if all you care about is maximizing profits or economic indicators.

fixed that for you, HTH, HAND